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Freedom of Speech Humor

Have some integrity!

Last summer, I wrote a post comparing a fantastic article on Morocco with a rather terrible one. Almost immediately, the author of the terrible one contacted me, defending their (yes, I’m using the wrong pronoun on purpose) article, then consequently threatening to sue me for defamation.

After much consideration, I decided it just wasn’t worth it – after all, my post was fairly petty (the article was that bad), and no one was reading it at this point anyway. I suppose there just comes the time where you’ve got to put aside your convictions for the good of your “career.”

And what I mean is, let’s go out on a limb and say this “journalist” had succeeded in suing me – what then? We all know I’m not wealthy, and I’d much rather spend the money I do have on my impending root canal and new Macbook than paying off some whiny wannabe-journalist.

On the other hand, I think the act of suing someone is unbelievably absurd, and my defiance and desire not to delete the post stems directly from that. If you are a journalist, and you write a bad article, shouldn’t it be open to criticism, even petty, snarky, Jillian York-style criticism? Aren’t you tarnishing your own reputation by writing such an article, without proper research, in the first place? And by commenting on that blog post and identifying yourself, aren’t you just causing more trouble for yourself?

What am I rambling on about? Have some integrity. Both journalistic integrity and enough personal integrity not to cry over what some twentysomething, hack blogger has to say about you. Life is too short to whine, my friend. Way too short.

2 replies on “Have some integrity!”

You said it Jill. People who write for the public need to be ready to take criticism from that same public. I don’t think they would’ve been able to really sue you anyway; just because American is an overly-litigeous society everyone thinks suing is easy…”it ain’t necessarily so”, to quote Miss Ella F.

Threatening to sue you over what you posted Jillian is a mean act. It’s outrageous and shows the fundamental intolerance of the people you apparently upset. I hope you’ll keep your spirit up as usual and keep posting -and delighting us in the process- about Morocco…
Cheers!

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